Front Page | Instructions for Authors | Astracts - English
Front Page | Instructions for Authors | Astracts - Arabic
Articles:
National Statistics, Ethnic Categorization, and Inequality Indicators in Israel
National statistics play an important role in the construction of ethnic categorization. The article analyzes the Statistical Abstract of Israel published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) from 1950 until 2020 and exposes the national statistics' contribution to the intra-Jewish ethnic binary distinction (between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim) during the state’s formative decades, parallel to the construction of Israeli ethnic inequality, and the gradual erasure of ethnicity from the CBS inequality indicators at the last decades. Since CBS set an expiration date for ethnicity - two generations after immigration - in the last two decades, third and fourth generations have become untraceable in official statistics. At the same time, the CBS developed new indicators to examine and measure inequality: the "Socio-Economic Cluster Index" in 1987 and the "Peripherality Index" in 2008. These new inequality indicators, which "bypass ethnicity", are based on space. I discuss the implications of this "statistical ethnic-blind approach", arguing that the new inequality indicators erase the history of immigration and settlement in Israel which created the ethnic inequality structure prevalent till this day. Furthermore, the absence of ethnic based statistical data hinders proper analysis of current inequality in Israel.
A Pleasant Place to Live: Class Comfort and Middle-Class Attitudes towards Diversity
The current literature repeatedly points to gaps and tensions between the generally positive attitudes of members of the middle-class towards diversity and their treatment of social others in their neighborhoods. In this article I explore these gaps and the socio-spatial mechanism shaping them. The article is based on a comparative study of the residential choices of middle-class and upper middle-class residents of Tel Aviv and Beersheba. It argues that the attitudes of the middle class towards social diversity reflect the tension between a declarative class culture expressed in general views, and an internalized class culture expressed in a sense of comfort in one’s neighborhood. Paradoxically, middle-class residents’ ability to feel comfortable in socially diverse spaces rests on the use of segregative strategies in urban space. When not able to use these strategies, middle-class residents develop negative attitudes towards social others and a preference for gated communities.
Based on 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with radical right-wing activists from the West-Bank (out of 60 interviews with activists from various sectors), this article seeks to explain what interpretations radical right-wing activists give to violence directed towards the state. The findings raise two non-mutually exclusive possibilities: First, violence is perceived as a conscious strategy for socio-political change. Interviewees agree to risk themselves, but less so their group, in exchange for the potential benefit of marking what activists call a 'price-tag' for the state concerning future land evacuations. Second, violence indicates undermining perceived state legitimacy. As such, perceived state legitimacy consists of six different components, which the interviewees differentially undermine: identification, trust, procedural justice, distributive justice, legality, and effectiveness. The article proposes to examine whether and how conclusions could be drawn from it and be applied to other right-wing radical groups around the world.
Does the Hebrew Language Fail Women? Evidence from Five Experiments
Tamar Kricheli-Katz and Tali Regev
This paper explores the effects of addressing women and men in different gendered forms on their performance using five experiments conducted on a large representative sample of the Hebrew-speaking adult population in Israel. In the first experiment, addressing women in the masculine in an online math exam reduced their efforts and achievements in math, relative to addressing them in the feminine. Similarly, addressing men in the feminine relative to the masculine reduced their achievements, but the differences were smaller and not always significant. Three additional studies tested whether the gendered form of address activates stereotypes regarding women and men and their abilities. Finally, we tested the effects of two additional practices of using forms of address that are intended to be more gender inclusive: the masculine-plural form of address and the slash (masculine/feminine). Addressing women in the masculine-plural resulted in the best outcomes for women in our research project and had no negative effects on men's achievements. The study provides evidence for the powerful role of language in reinforcing and preserving gender stereotypes and gaps.
Multiplicity of Patterns of Egalitarian Gender Ideology among Arab-Palestinian Couples in Israel
Ensherah Khoury and Orly Benjamin
Sociologists of Arab-Palestinian families living in Israel emphasize normative imperatives for men to identify with the provider role and for women to identify with family life. Up until recently, those living away from this dichotomy have not received the attention they deserve. Hochschild’s notion of gender ideology refers to the sphere with which an individual identifies. Analyzing it in interviews with twenty couples self-defined as resisting tradition, we found four patterns of gender ideology: (1) Domesticity; (2) Flexibility; (3) Earning a living; and (4) Role Reversal. This finding suggests the need to conceptualize gender ideology by recognizing that for Arab-Palestinian men in Israel, there is no separation between the sphere of a family-home and the sphere of work. This lack of separation contrasts Hochschild's progressive narrative. Further, men’s identification with family-home life is likely to facilitate their opposition to traditional gender divisions resisting the social control exercised by the extended family.
Essay:
Biased Education – Discriminatory Education: Mizrahi Education as a Means for Reducing Disparities
Conversations about Books:
Gili Hammer, Khaled Furani, Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani and Orna Sasson-Levy
On: "Israeli Sociology: Ideological History 1882–2018" by Uri Ram
On: "Laborers and Actors in Translation: From the Individual Turn to a Bi-National Translation" by Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani
Book Reviews:
On: Returning to Reims \ Didier Eribon
On: Translocational Belongings: Intersectional Dilemmas and Social Inequalities \ Floya Anthias
On: A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time \ Kinneret Lahad
On: Educational Inequality in Israel: From Research to Policy \ Nachum Blass, Hanna Ayalon, Yariv Feniger and Yossi Shavit
On: Justice, Privatization and the Objectives of the Educational System \ Yossi Dahan
On: The Israeli Path to Neoliberalism: The State, Continuity and Change \ Arie Krampf
On: The Stratifying Trade Union: The Case of Ethnic and Gender Inequality in Palestine, 1920–1948 \ Shaul Duke
On: Orientalism, Zionism and Academic Practice: Middle East and Islam Studies in Israeli Universities \ Eyal Clyne
On: The Naqab Bedouins: A Century of Politics and Resistance \ Mansour Nasasra
On: Nationalism and Secularization \ Zohar Maor and Yochi Fisher (Eds.)
On: Encounters Around the Text: An Ethnography of Judaisms \ Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
On: Domestic Discourse and the Invention of Modern Ashkenazi 1920–1970 \ Michal Chacham